Raymonda

Important Ballets & *Revivals of Marius Petipa

*Paquita (1847, *1881)
*Le Corsaire (1858, 1863, 1868, 1885, 1899)
The Pharaoh's Daughter (1862, *1885, *1898)
Le Roi Candaule (1868, *1891, *1903)
Don Quixote (1869, *1871)
La Bayadère (1877, *1900)
*Giselle (1884, 1899, 1903)
*Coppélia (1884)
*La fille mal gardée (1885)
*La Esmeralda (1886, 1899)
The Talisman (1889)
The Sleeping Beauty (1890)
The Nutcracker (1892)
Cinderella (1893)
The Awakening of Flora (1894)
*Swan Lake (1895)
*The Little Humpbacked Horse (1895)
Raymonda (1898)
The Seasons (1900)
Harlequinade (1900)

Raymonda (Russian: Раймонда) is a ballet in three acts, four scenes with an apotheosis, choreographed by Marius Petipa, with music by Alexander Glazunov, his opus 57. First presented by the Imperial Ballet at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre on 19 January [O.S. 7 January] 1898 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Among the ballet's most celebrated passages is the Pas Classique hongrois or Raymonda Pas de dix from the third act, which is often performed independently.

Contents

History

Composition history

Raymonda was the creation of Marius Petipa, the renowned Maître de Ballet to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, the composer Alexander Glazunov, the director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky, and the author and columnist Countess Lidiya Pashkova.

Performance history

St. Petersburg Premiere (World Premiere)

Moscow Premiere

Other Notable Productions

Original Interpreters

Role St. Petersburg 1898 Moscow 1900 Moscow 1908
Raymonda Pierina Legnani Adelaide Giuri Yekaterina Geltser
Jean de Brienne Sergey Legat Mikhail Mordkin Vasiliy Tikhomirov
Henrietta Olga Preobrajenska
Cléménce Klavdiya Kulichevskaya
Abderakhman Pavel Gerdt Aleksey Yermolayev M. Shchipachov

The full-length Raymonda has been revived many times throughout its performance history, the most noted productions being staged by Mikhail Fokine for the Ballet Russe (1909); Anna Pavlova for her touring company (1914); George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (1946); Konstantin Sergeyev for the Kirov Ballet (1948); Rudolf Nureyev for American Ballet Theatre (1975), and for the Paris Opera Ballet (1983); Yuri Grigorovich for the Bolshoi Ballet (1984); Anna-Marie Holmes (in a 2-act reduction) for the Finnish National Ballet (2004), a version which was then staged for American Ballet Theatre (2004) and the Dutch National Ballet (2005).

There have been many productions around the world of only extracts from the full-length Raymonda, being for the most part taken from the Grand Pas Classique Hongrois from the third Act, which is considered to be among Marius Petipa's supreme masterworks. The most noted of these productions have been staged by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet (1955, 1961, 1973); Rudolf Nureyev for the Royal Ballet Touring Company (1964); and Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre (1980, 1987).

In 2005 the Australian Ballet Company performed a modern version of Raymonda, set in the 1950s, where Raymond is a Hollywood star and has filmed her last film before marrying a European prince. It was choreographed by Stephen Baynes and bears no resemblance to the original ballet.

Structure

Act I (scene 1) — La fête de Raymonde

—a. La traditrice
a. Valse provençale
b. Pizzicato – Variation de Raymonde
c. Coda
a. La Romanesque
b. Une fantaisie – Variation de Raymonde

Act I (scene 2) — Visions

a. Grand adage
b. Valse fantastique
c. Variation I
d. Variation II
e. Variation de Raymonde (cut by Petipa from the original production)
interpolation: Variation pour Mlle. Legnani (arranged by Glazunov from the Valse of his 1894 Scènes de Ballet, op. 52)
f. Grand coda

Act I (scene 3) — L'aurore

Act II — Cour d'amour

a. Grand adage
b. Variation
c. Variation
d. Variation de Raymonde
e. Grand coda
no.22 Entrée
no.23 Pas des esclaves sarrasins
no.24 Pas des mariscos
no.25 Danse sarrasine
no.26 Pandéros
no.27 Danse orientale (transformed by Petipa into the scene Les échansons)
no.28 Coda générale / Bacchanalia

Act III — Le festival des noces

a. Entrée
b. Grand adage (a.k.a. Pas de dix)
c. Variation I
d. Variation II (cut by Petipa from the original production)
e. Variation pour quatre danseurs
f. Variation de Raymonde
interpolation: Variation (taken from the Act II Pas d'action, 1948 by Konstantin Sergeyev)
g. Grand coda

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